... : Reviewed by Trevor zA lien FANNY KEMBLE was an unusual actress. The theatrical profession, she said, was utterly distasteful to me, though acting itself was not. Cast to play Desdemona, she confessed, I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed. She would dissect her own acting more ruthlessly than any critic, with no illusions that she was an inspired genius. She ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor tAllen CHRISTMAS is a happy time for book buyers; they can impose on others their own particular fancies and thus double their pleasure. Instead of merely saying You must read so- and-so, they pack off the book, which is much more satisfying-- to the sender if not always to the recipient. JNo doubt the new Bernard ralk biography, The Way of the Montagues (Hutchinson, ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor ojdllen MISS HENRIETTA LESLIE must be an inveterate traveller. She seems to have wandered through most lands on every kind of mount except the giraffe and in every sort of conveyance, from apple-cart to Kago and Xebec-- the last two a Jap litter and Adriatic boat. It all began with mother's brougham, which took her to the Drury Lane panto, her first ball, and Queen ...

... Books Reviewed by Trevor A 11 en MR. BERNARD WICKSTEED is the Daily Express man who emerges on Saturdays to tell us the Facts of Life, sometimes with Mr. Pincher, nature's knowall, and always with humour. A visit to the Zoo, for example, will disclose that while sea lions like classical music more than jazz, the rhino likes neither and charges straight at the band whatever they play; and it is ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor ^Allen DR. JOHNSON, Boswell, Piozzi, Mrs. Thrale is there any limit to permutation with such figures to play with? Mr. C. E. Vulliamy moves, relates, transposes them with skill in his elegantly written, Ursa Major: A Study of Dr. Johnson and His Friends (Michael Joseph, 15s.), pointing to old blots and blemishes if only to admit, in the end, that perhaps they were ...

... .wwwwwwwwwThe Moods Of Our SIR PHILIP GIBBS the novelist is still Philip Gibbs s the special correspondent, working on a broader canvas. Skilled, modest, painstaking, conscientious, S with no solemn literary pretensions, he mirrors in novel after novel the social and political moods and movements of our time, and has probably given us and posterity c a sounder fiction documentary of the past ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor c >_Allen WARDROOM stories, at their best, take a lot of beating-- I've just read one about a flag officer at Gib. who used to row himself round the fleet in his skiff for daily exercise. One morning he rowed right inside the boiler-room of a badly holed destroyer, and was examin ing the damage in the gloom when a fat leading stoker shouted from the gallery above: Ere, ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor iAlle?i MISS URSULA BLOOM wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she earned an imitation jam one for her first published Literary Creation as a child. A pretty young Frinton widow with a zest for fame and a need to earn, she gate crashed the magazine world, with the help of kindly editors, and was soon deep in the throes of Ruth and the Rajah, Ruth Cannot Be ...

... Books: Reviewed by Trevor zAllen SINCE this is panto time, who, may we ask, originated it? John Rich, the first harlequin, at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in 1717, though similar shows had prepared the way. Who was the first principal boy? Probably a Miss Ellington, prince in The Good Woman in the Wood at the Lyceum in 1852, though she was discreetly skirted to the knees, trunks being scorned ...

... Reviewed by Trevor Allen WHAT better for the holiday month than a charming book, My Country-in-Law (Michael Joseph, 10s. 6d.), about a little- known corner of France-- that rugged, granite, heather Creuse country near Vichy where the men are mostly stonecutters and masons and the women toil in the fields? To reach the St. V ri pi v-1 a -Mnn fx ptip home of the French artist whom she had ...

... s 5 LA I D you have a toy cardboard theatre S I J when you were young? If not, you 5 haven't lived. The snipping, the gummy S fingers, the thrill when at last the scene was set and you could push on your characters, s all in the wrong order! The romance of Black- it. Eyed Susan and The Miller and His Men\ In Juvenile Drama (Macdonald, 15s.) s Mr. George Speaight traces the history of the ...

... Books Reviewed by Trevor c \Allen NOW that we have developed an Empire conscience and may soon have little Empire on which to keep it clean, bright, and slightly oiled, it is guiltily ex citing to recall the days when we were naughty boys pushing Indian opium into China and waxing fat on the nefarious traffic. Focusing the 1830- 1842 period at Canton in Foreign Mud (Faber, 21s.), Mr. ...